Best Actress: Grace Kelly
One of the most unfairly controversial Oscar winners, ladies and gents, Grace Kelly!
If there's no one defending Grace Kelly's Oscar win for The Country Girl, then I'm dead. It was my very first post on Box Office Poisons and I'll stand by the opinion that Grace was a deserving Oscar winner until my dying day.
(And that's not to discount Judy Garland, who was fantastic in A Star is Born, so don't come for me in the comments in bad faith!)
Grace was only briefly a Hollywood star (a term I'm sure she'd hate me using to describe her) but in that time she became an iconic Hitchcock blonde, one of the best-dressed women in showbiz, a two-time Oscar nominee (and one-time winner) and quickly blazed to the top of the food chain. It was a lot of hard work to get her there, and talent that kept her there, but hers is really a meteoric rise.
And it's unfair that today she's remembered for her Hitchcock films, or for leaving it all behind to become the Princess of Monaco, or for her liaisons off set. And, most especially as it relates to this series, that she didn't deserve her Oscar win for The Country Girl and effectively stole Judy Garland's Oscar for her starring role in A Star is Born.
The Country Girl is such a departure from the films Grace was making up til this point. She already had two Hitchcock films under her belt and was known for her glam and glitz, and so she really fought tooth and claw to get the role of Georgie Elgin, the dowdy and depressed housewife that wastes away playing helpmate to Bing Crosby's alcoholic/suicidal crooner, Frank. There's two brief scenes where Grace is dolled up, shoulders back, hair done and make-up applied. Every other scene she limps into, she's wearing fusty spinster garments and her bones are propping her up. There's defeat in every word she mutters and grief skimming the surface of every glance she levies towards her husband or the show's producer Bernie (played by William Holden).
For Grace, this wasn't about using herself to paint the scenery or to sell the appeal, this was a role about her dramatic talents and showing the world that she was more than what they thought of her. She didn't just venture out to Hollywood to become a clotheshorse and star in blockbusters, she went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and loved theatre and always wanted to be a serious actor. With The Country Girl, she had to risk everything to get the role. She committed to Green Fire (which, if you haven't seen, you're not missing anything) and risked suspension just to be able to take the role, and even once she had the critical support and an Oscar nomination, she was still fighting MGM to be taken seriously. When she went to the Oscars ceremony, she was on suspension!
The Country Girl isn't as big a spectacle as A Star is Born, and there's not as much for Grace to do as Judy did in that film. Judy is, of course, a legend, and if she'd won for the role she hands down would've rocketed to the top of the list of best Best Actress winners of all time. But there's still beauty in drama and restraint, and watching Grace as Georgie get more tightly-wound the longer the film goes on is something to behold.
And it's nice to see how Grace was rewarded for the talent rather than being the shallow fashionista some thought she was.
DID I LIKE THE COUNTRY GIRL? I did, whether you think that's controversial or not. Grace didn't have a long Hollywood career, but The Country Girl is definitely up there as one of my favourite of her films. Is it one of the strongest films that garnered its star an Oscar? No, but Grace does magnificent work with the role.
Did you like The Country Girl? What are your thoughts on Grace Kelly's Oscar win?
Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here.
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* For legal purposes, that was a joke.
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